


Lady in Waiting

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-20
Updated: 2005-10-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She would be his, as she'd always been his.  (Dracula/Lucy Westenra)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady in Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Niamh St. George

 

 

Author's Notes: Thank you to Mitch and Janeway for beta reading.

I've read the book several times but that was many years ago, so I apologize if anything here contradicts canon. I'm not sure if it was addressed in the book, so please allow me a bit of creative license on the issue of clothes.

**Lady in Waiting**

Count Dracula hung upside down in a tree outside her window, gazing in with bat eyes at the beautiful creature asleep on the bed. Her face was waxen, her breathing shallow, and her head still like a porcelain doll's resting against the pillow.

 _Lucy_ , he called out, knowing that his corporeal form had no effect on his ability to enchant. It was his essence that made the silent calling, not his current form's flesh. He was pleased to see her turn as if flush with a dream, her lips parting in a delicate moan. She was weakening, day by day growing more gaunt, more pale. The lively, vivacious blonde he'd met weeks ago was fading like the color in her cheeks. It mattered not. Soon she would be like him. Soon this dreary life of hers would give way to something full and passionate and hungry. Soon she would become his companion.

But not before he drank his fill. Not before he took the blood of her life and warmed his veins with it. Not before he tasted the coppery tang of humanity, of passion. The blood was life. His life.

He unfurled his leathery wings and flapped them sharply, sending air furrowing away in stormy eddies. Then he stretched them out to either side, let out a screech, and dropped headlong from the branch. His wings caught in the breeze, and he began the furious downward strokes that would take him to her window. Reaching out with his claws, he caught the vines that choked the casement. Peering inside to get a better view, he made sure that Lucy was alone. Then he dropped to the large stone sill and transformed. He lifted the window and slid inside, the tails of his coat sliding sinuously over the threshold. Lucy moaned and writhed against the pillow, her face touched with a half-hearted blush.

"My dear," he said in a soft, delicate whisper. "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." The sound was a snake, coiling around her, filling her with poison, freezing her in her sleep. She quieted, her arms and neck going limp, beholden to his whispers. He ran his fingertips along the coverlet, admiring the fine brocade, while approaching her with a predator's stealth. He closed the distance with a confidence born of certainty. She would be his, as she'd always been his.

Her blood was in his veins.

"See," he commanded softly, the word a lace-covered sword. Her eyes opened in a dreamlike trance. Paralyzed, helpless, but longing. So filled with longing.

It mirrored his own.

He ran a finger over her lips, noting their pallor. He touched her hair, its shine but a memory, its previously soft curls brittle and dry.

Blood was life. Blood was passion. Blood was everything.

The room was silent but for her breathing -- a shallow hiss of a sound. He reached under her neck to undo the little velvet band that covered his mark. It dropped away, leaving the brownish scabs and jagged-edged skin exposed. He studied the maw of his mark, the one blemish on her otherwise flawless neck. Then he leaned down slowly, taking in her scent - lavender and the hint of fine powder - and basking in her warmth. Lovely, lovely, Lucy, he thought. His lady in waiting.

_Lucy._

He leaned in and rested one hand on her forehead, as though comforting a child. His purpose however was not to comfort, it was to control. Not that it took much anymore. The waning of her color had been following the waning of her strength. He no longer had to enchant - she was powerless to resist him anyway.

Turning her head to the side to expose her soft, sumptuous neck, he then ran his finger along its curves, following the pretty lines to their end. He wrapped his powerful hand over her shoulder, using his leverage to hold her down. Again, it was hardly needed, but it was habit, a part of his ritual.

His lips curled back, revealing the length of his fangs. Power and hunger roared through his tendons, steeled his muscles, and tightened his jaw. Then he sank into her skin, sliding deep into her pliant flesh, cutting her wounds anew. He couldn't see her eyes, but he knew they'd snapped closed. He heard her moan and then whimper. His body was tensed with expectation as the first hint of blood rolled over his tongue like a powerful elixir.

He was overcome with the sights and smells and sounds of who she was. His hand on her shoulder rose and fell with the gasping of her lungs. His nostrils filled with the scent of her fear. His ears were captivated by the flutter of her heart. The world slowed for him, as it did for her - two beings in a timeless dance, a sharing of essence, a passing of being.

He wanted it all. As he always did. He wanted to take it all down in one long draught, to keep pulling it in and swallowing until there was nothing left. But not yet. He had to exercise patience. If he stopped, her body would serve him. It would make more of its exquisite liqueur to quench his thirst. Not forever, not tirelessly, but it would carry on in its task of making as long as it could. As long as he let it.

Against every yearning, he tipped his head back, feeling his fangs slide out of the tears they'd created. There was always a moment of loneliness, of withdrawal when he backed away, when he gave up what he wanted so dearly.

He gazed down at her pallid face - so beautiful, so perfect.

_Soon, Lucy._

With graceful, manicured fingers, he pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of his mouth, enjoying the trappings of this young, mortal body. Lucy's eyes fluttered, but only briefly - she was too weak even to rest her gaze on him. No matter. Soon she would appreciate his every visage, his every form. He backed away and soaked up her image, feeling her coursing through him as he watched her laying there helpless.

So ironic that that which was so weak could foster such strength. Her parlor had deepened to an almost alabaster glow. It wouldn't be long. Her mortal body had nearly given him all that it could. He pulled back the heavy drapes at the window, letting the blue moonlight rob her skin of any hint of a warm hue.

"Goodnight, sweet Lucy," he whispered, pushing up the sash on the window and sliding out. He balanced gracefully on the sill and pulled the window down behind him. His body shimmered and then transformed, shrinking and changing.

He flapped his ominous, black wings and alit from the sill, swooping out across the moon -- a lone shadow in the night.

But he knew he wouldn't be alone for long.

 

 

 


End file.
